Product Review
I must admit that I was very excited when the UPS deliveryman showed up at my door a couple of weeks ago with my new Cricut die-cutting machine because I was very excited to try it out.
When I first opened the box, everything was neatly packaged. There was a pretty easy to follow fold out brochure explaining how to do a quick set up for the machine. I found that I had to pull the holder for the blade out a little farther than recommended in the instructions to get the blade to fit.
All I had to do next was plug it in and insert a cartridge. Each cartridge comes with a typing mat that fits on a keypad on the top of the machine. I found in very easy to make my selections for the words and numbers I wanted to have cut out.
There are rolling dials on the front of the machine you use to select the letter size and cutting speed. As you roll the dial, your selection shows up on the little screen on the top of the machine. Very easy to adjust and read.
After making the cutting selections, you just hit cut and the machine does all of the work. It was surprising how fast the machine cut.
You use a sticky mat to hold the paper in place while cutting. I have read that these mats can wear out after about 50 uses and you can extend the life of the mat if you alternate using two different mats. Of course this only comes with one mat, so it may just be a way for the company to make a bit more money. A worker at a local craft store told my friend that you could just use repositionable tacky spray on the mat when it isn’t as sticky as you’d like it. I haven’t tried it myself, but plan to once my mat looses some of the stickiness.
The paper was a little tricky to get off of the mat and I would recommend getting the tool kit that is available for the Cricut so that you can have the tools to help you lift the paper off of the mat.
Here is a layout I did using the Cricut to cut out my title and the number 6. All of the materials on this layout came from Scrapbook Circle’s june Kit.
Overall, so far I love the Cricut and I plan on using it on many fun projects in the future.
If you would like to learn more specifics about the Cricut machine, you can check out this blog.
If you have any questions about the Cricut that I may be able to answer, please do not hesitate to ask.